Ronnie Fieg's Passion for BMW Goes Beyond His KITH Collaboration: It's True Love
The multihyphenate speaks with HYPEBEAST about the design process behind his KITH x BMW M4 Competition and capsule collection.
Ronnie Fieg‘s relationship with BMW harks back to when he was a boy. His first BMW experience was when he was seven after his grandfather bought a white E30 M3 in the ’80s, and this passion has only grown stronger since. Naturally, a collaboration between his brand KITH and BMW was only a matter of time, and the duo recently presented the KITH x BMW 2021 M4 Competition alongside an extensive co-branded capsule collection.
In an exclusive interview with HYPEBEAST, Ronnie Fieg and the designer of the BMW M4‘s exterior — Anne Forschner — discuss everything from the importance of the M brand in BMW’s legacy to what a collaboration between the two mainstays would look like.
The two describe how designing is about looking to the past and to the future — for Forschner, it helps her to design the car and deliver only the most important aspects, something focused and organically M. A BMW M3 or M4 has to hold up to the marque’s standards, a car that’s the most precise, powerful, poised, and by enlisting Fieg the collaboration only further extends M’s language.
Its instantly recognizable stripes served as a core design inspiration and feature prominently throughout, and helped to create a car that blends KITH’s aesthetic with BMW’s sensibilities. From here, it became almost second nature to Fieg when designing an accompanying apparel line.
94 pieces capture the essence of BMW and give people a way of experiencing the brand without having to drive one of its cars. These clothes aim to capture the emotions you’d feel when you’re focused on a visceral experience as a driver, and as a result, feature a number of pieces indebted to racing culture or historical racing attire: most notably, suede bombers and wool varsity jackets, suede gloves, racing leathers, and branded caps.
You can watch and hear Ronnie Fieg explain his BMW collaboration in-depth — alongside more technical information from Anne Forschner — in the HYPEBEAST-exclusive video above. For more information about the BMW M4 Competition, head to BMW’s website.
In case you missed it, here is BMW’s new M3 and M4.
